A communist double agent flees Saigon in 1975 and lands in Los Angeles, where he spies on his fellow exiles while losing himself between identities. Nguyen wrote the great Vietnamese American novel: bitter, hilarious, intellectually relentless. It won the 2016 Pulitzer and demolished the idea that the Vietnam War belongs to American storytellers alone.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.